The Fallen Queen. Emily Purdy

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СКАЧАТЬ while Kate sucked mint lozenges to ease her aching throat and strummed a lute as Ned sang his heart out until the seventh and last kitten was birthed and Kate was all smiles again, hugging an armful of squirming, mewling kittens to her breast and lavishing kisses, praise, and loving pats upon dear Marzipan. She lingered long enough to kiss Ned’s cheek and thank him yet again before she hastened to the kitchen to fetch a bowl of milk for Marzipan.

      “That was the day I fell in love,” both Kate and Ned would always say each time they fondly recalled their first meeting. But both were nobly born children, well-schooled in their duty, and they knew all too well that their hearts would not dictate who they married; their parents would make that decision. And Kate knew that Ned was supposed to be Jane’s suitor, and Jane was her sister and as such had a prior claim upon Kate’s heart. At eleven, almost twelve, with her head full of tales of chivalry and doomed love, like her favourite story of Guinevere and Lancelot, Kate saw exquisite beauty and true nobility of the heart and soul in making such a sacrifice for her sister’s sake. She had yet to learn that life isn’t like stories, and the things that sound beautiful and grand on the golden tongues of minstrels are in truth often full of pain that stabs deep into the heart and is bitter as gall.

      But the dim and distant possibility that Ned might someday marry Jane was little more than a faint and gentle ripple upon the placid pond of our existence. He came and went, then his father, the Lord Protector, was disgraced, his head and fortune lost, and John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, stood in his stead, holding King Edward’s weak, frail hand as it wielded the sceptre of power, and not another word was said of Ned Seymour; he was now a person of no importance.

      Then came the February day, in 1553, when our lives would change forever.

      We were outdoors, frolicking in the snow that Kate said made rosy-bricked Bradgate look like a great mound of strawberries covered with cream, bundled against the cold in thick wool gowns and layers of petticoats, fur-lined velvet coats, boots, and gloves, with woollen scarves tied tight around our heads to keep our ears warm, as we three girls were from babes ever prone to ear pains. We had even persuaded Jane to forsake her beloved books and join us. A milk cow had gotten loose, and upon seeing it, Kate had instantly conceived the notion that we should have a treat.

      “A syllabub! We shall have a syllabub! A sweet, sweet syllabub!” Her voice sang out like an angel’s sweetest proclamation through a frosty cloud of breath as she danced in delight, her boots raising lively billows of powdery snow.

      She sent me scurrying to the barn to fetch a pail. Jane, fifteen and more sullen than ever if that were possible, was left to mind the cow, under strictest orders not to let it stray from her sight or to let anyone take it away. And Kate ran quickly to the kitchen to charm the cook with her winning smile and wheedle a cup each of sugar, cinnamon, and honey, a long-handled spoon, and a bottle of wine.

      Cook always used to tell us there was no need to add cinnamon and honey; wine and sugar alone were enough to make a tasty syllabub, but Kate always insisted it must be “sweeter than sweet” and “as sweet as can be,” and she loved cinnamon best of all spices, so it must be a part of our special syllabub. And in the end, Cook threw up her hands and let her have her way.

      Kate and cinnamon, to this day I cannot think of one without the other—she loved everything about it, its taste, colour, and smell; she always delighted to suck on cinnamon sticks and candies, and when she was older, she even had it blended into her rose perfume to create a special aroma that was all Kate’s own. Though other ladies tried to copy it, they could never get it quite right.

      When Cook said she could not give the wine without our father or lady-mother’s consent, Kate’s blue grey eyes filled with tears and her pink lips pouted and quivered. Cook was no match against Kate’s tears, and she quickly relented, with hands upon her broad hips, declaring that “neither God nor the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk can hold me accountable for what happens when my back is turned!” and pointedly turned away, giving her full attention to the pastry crust she was making, as Kate crept into the cellar to pilfer a bottle of our father’s favourite red Gascony wine, the kind that is spicy and sweet all at the same time.

      Kate concealed the bottle inside her coat as she passed back through the kitchen, smiling sweet and brazen, pausing only long enough to kiss the cook’s cheek and whisper a promise that when she returned the cups and spoon she would bring her back some of our syllabub.

      Everyone loved Kate, and no one could resist her; she was so saucy and vivacious, with a heart tender and loving as could be. She had a smile that made you feel like roses were growing around your feet, beautiful, sweet-smelling roses without the nasty thorns, just like my rosy, pink-cheeked, and smiling sister. She was thirteen then, glowing, and growing more beautiful every day, ripening into womanhood with rounded hips and pert little breasts of which she was very proud and longed to feel a lover’s hand reach around to cup as he kissed the nape of her neck. Unlike Jane, who shrank from such “sordid speculations,” and far preferred her ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew texts instead, Kate was avid for more fleshly knowledge, to learn all she could about carnal matters, and the “good and merry sport that happens between a man and his wife behind the bedcurtains at night.” She was eager to be wedded and bedded and prayed that our parents wouldn’t tarry too long over finding her a husband.

      When Kate appeared at the kitchen door, I left the pail with Jane and the cow and ran to help relieve her of her sweet burden—the three full, brimming tin cups, wine bottle, and wooden spoon made a clumsy and precarious armful. Kate handed the rest to Jane and approached the cow. She rubbed her gloved hands together to warm them for the cow, she explained, for she would not like someone’s icy fingers on her teats and didn’t imagine the cow would either. Then, furrowing her brow in concentration—she had never milked a cow before—she gave the cow a pat, said, “Please pardon the presumption, My Lady Brown Eyes,” squatted down, and began to gently pull at its cold pink teats, squirting the milk straight into the ice-cold pail I had brought from the barn. When the pail was full, we poured in the cinnamon, sugar, honey, and wine and took turns stirring vigorously, whipping it into a rich, creamy froth that we scooped into the now empty cups.

      We sat back, sipping our syllabub, sprawled in a snowbank, as if it were a warm feather bed and not wet and cold, giggling and waving our arms and legs, making angels with flowing skirts and fluttering wings, laughing as the wine warmed us within, imagining the sugar, cinnamon, and wine blazing a zesty, spicy-sweet trail through our veins, racing to see which would be first to reach our heads and make us giddy. Jane started to expound on something she had read in a tedious medical tome, but neither Kate nor I was listening and she soon drifted back into glum silence again.

      Suddenly Kate flung her cup aside and leapt up, pulling me and a most reluctant Jane after her, and we began to dance.

      I was eight then, and my joints not yet so badly afflicted that I could not dance a joyful jig. Though in my bed that night I might ache and cry and beg Hetty, my nurse, to heat stones in the fire, then wrap and tuck them in against my back and hips or ’neath my knees, I was not thinking about that then; time enough for that when the pain held me in its grip, impossible to ignore, when all I wanted to do was sleep. I kicked up my heels, raising clouds of snow, like dainty, dwarfish blizzards, and gave myself wholeheartedly to the dance, laughing at the wet slap-flap my skirts made when I kicked my little legs as high as I could. With my sisters, I could dance, free and easy, giddy and gay, as I would never dare do before others.

      When I was a little girl and first discovered the delight of twirling round and round, skipping, prancing, kicking, and leaping, I thought there could be nothing better than to be a dancing girl, but when my lady-mother overheard me prattling this dream to my nurse one evening, she seized me roughly by the arm, her fingernails biting hard enough to draw blood, and dragged me out into the gallery overlooking the Great Hall. There she swung me up, with a roughness that made the burly men СКАЧАТЬ